Yearly Archives: 2016

This month I updated all my Firefox extensions. So, if you a Firefox user, maybe you will find some of them useful.

Advanced Locationbar
Linkifies URL segments in your Location bar. Fork of Locationbar² with bugfixes. Includes support of Internationalized Domain Names and separate linkification of domain and subdomain.

Pure URL
This add-on automatically removes all garbage like "utm_source=*" from URLs. These fields are provided for the Google Analytics and they are not a necessity.

System Menu Ex
Extends system menu of the main window. Adds an ability to create a new window (private or general), open the About window and restart the browser. Don't forget to enable the title bar! The menu can be opened using left click on the application icon.

Projects like the Need For Seed III Modern Patch require enormous amount of time for developing and support. It is not possible to do such things spending only an hour or two in the evenings. It requires days and weeks of hard work without huge gaps, 8-10 hours per day. Please donate if you like my projects and would like to get some new updates. It is the best motivator to continue working on them.

I have published initial version of the NFS4 Modern Patch. Currently, it has a small amount of fixes. Unfortunately, I had spent more than 150 days during last year on developing of the NFS3 Modern Patch, it is too much, and now I can't afford to spend enough time for porting main useful changes to the NFS4. I recommend you to try the NFS3 Modern Patch to understand how big and useful this NFS4 version of the patch could be.

This kind of work needs much time. It is not possible to do such things spending only an hour or two in the evenings. It requires days and weeks of hard work without huge gaps, 8-10 hours per day. I had started NFS3 Modern Patch a year ago, and little by little this project absorbed all my time and had taken the place of my paid work (freelance). Now I can't continue in the same spirit because I'm almost out of money. It's time to choose what I will do next.

The first release of my patch for the Need For Speed 4: High Stakes. It is a side project of the Need For Speed III Modern Patch. Currently, it has a small amount of fixes. The key features of this patch are portability (no more registry!) and high poly cars support (it is useful for modding). There is still no widescreen resolutions support.

Better Rear View Detail setting. Light from the car headlights and cop flashers will be rendered even on Medium value of this setting. View Distance and Car Detail in the Rear View Mirror now depends on Rear View Detail also. So, if you have performance problems with High level of the Rear View Detail setting, just use Medium. It have to be much more usable now.

Better compatibility with the Thrash API v107 according to fog. So, the DX7 renderer can render fog in the NFS3 now.

Fixed a bug of the original game which was a cause of using player name from the loaded ghost file instead of the current player name.

More than 20 changes in these releases. See the readme file for more details.

A software MIDI synthesizer for Windows, which functions as a VSTi plugin. Supports both the Yamaha XG and the Roland GS extensions, which is a unique feature of the S-YXG50. The VSTi was a part of the Yamaha SOL2 package. Yamaha discontinued support of this software synthesizer in 2003. As it is abandonware now, a portable version of the VSTi was created (installation and registry keys are not required). It uses embedded (into DLL resources) official 4MB wavetable files, which is the best version of wavetable files for the S-YXG50.

Yamaha S-YXG50 was released in 1997. First versions were shipped with the simplified 2MB version of the wavetable, and the full 4MB version was published only in 2001. It seems that the cause of this is low amount of RAM in the computers of 90s. Both versions of the wavetable files were created in 1996 (4MB in February, simplified 2MB in July). Possibly, the full 4MB version is a dump of the WAVE ROM of the Yamaha MU80 / MU50 / QS300 / DB50XG / DB60XG / SW60XG / MU10, because the Yamaha S-YXG50 soft synthesizer is very similar to this series of hardware of 1994-1996.

No more non-rotating wheels in the rear view mirror and in the split screen mode (when Car Detail is High).

Rear View Mirror can display better 3D model, clouds, lightnings, and light from the headlights of cars and from the flashers of cops. “Rear View Mirror” detail setting was added. Better proportions of the objects in the rear view mirror.

An ability to enable or disable the fog effect directly from the graphics settings menu.

No more "Render_GetTm() raM out of raN" error for high poly cars. Corresponding buffer is 10 times larger now.

The View Angle setting allows to enable wider view angle, which is useful for the widescreen resolutions. New set of options: Narrow, Normal (former Wide), Wide.

10 times faster gameplay loading on modern systems. To skip loading animation just press any key.

An ability to use port 9803 for the network games. It solves the problem when you can't start a network game because port 1030 often is used by system services.

Built-in screenshoter. Just press Print Screen key, and a screenshot will be saved into the screenshots subdirectory in the JPG/PNG/BMP format.

Improved keyboard support in the menu. Now it is much more consistent. You can also use the Tab and Shift+Tab to switch between elements.

Consistent sounds in the menu. Volume of all menu sounds will be same. Also you can set Menu Sounds Volume separately from the volume of the ingame special effects.

About 100 small changes in the v1.4.0 and v1.5.0. See the readme file for more details.